Seems Reasonable To Me

I go back and forth on this Iraq war funding bill. In my heart of hearts, I want the troops home now. I want this thing over with now. Despite what Republicans and their mouthpieces would have you believe, it's not surrender. It's not defeat. It's gathering resources to fight another day. And we will fight another day.

But the reality is we're not going to bring them home today. So what to do now? We set benchmarks and we put them in writing. This has been the major problem of this war. No one, especially the president, has been clear as to what it is we're doing there and why we need to stay. Simple language in the new funding bill explaining this would do the trick nicely. And revisiting the goals in six months, something this president has been loathe to do, will provide impetus to either continue or to start the process of leaving.

Republicans don't want any part of letting the Iraq status-quo drag into the next election, but they're also not feeling any pain yet. So set the trap and let the president decide how he wants to navigate it. A perfect solution? Far from it. But it's better than nothing.